MY WEIGHTLOSS JOURNEY: PART2 & FAQ

September 19, 2015

You know that new week-new me saying? Well, I say you don’t have to wait until Monday or for the 1st of January to start over, because every day is a good day to begin your journey. How about this Saturday? Just slip into your kicks and go work-out for an hour, or head to the supermarket and treat yourself with a bunch of healthy food. Now since the majority of questions I received from you guys were about my nutrition, I thought I’d do that article first and save the work-outs for later. For those who missed the first part of my transformation series,simply click here and to get ahead: This article isn’t going to be any shorter than the previous one, because there’s so much I have to tell you.

Let’s start at the rock-bottom. When work-life began three years ago, my eating habits were at their worst. I had pastries in the morning, chocolate as a snack and usually some fast-food on the go (McDonald’s VIP client) for lunch. When I came home in the afternoon I was hungry again and destroyed a bowl (or two?) full of cereals. But that wasn’t all of it,no,no, there was also some major snacking happening in between with chocolate bars and candy, and lots of them.

I was left unhappy, without energy, bad sleep and a body that wouldn’t fit into my old clothes anymore. Fortunately I’m blessed with a pretty good skin, otherwise who knows what my face would have looked like with this extensive consumption of sweets. Pimples hello?! Don’t even want to think about it.

When I signed up at the gym in late 2014, I thought that it was the right moment to try and change my eating habits. Yes, try is the exact right word to use, because my nutrition was one big mess at that time as well. A piece of fruit for breakfast, some greek yoghurt and berries for lunch and a protein shake for dinner. That basically was on the menu from Monday to Friday. The weekend’s, on the other side, were one big feast, because I thought that hey,I’ve been so good during the week,I definitely deserve it. So it was Pizza on Friday evening, pastries on Saturday morning, sushi for dinner, pastries again on Sunday morning, pasta for lunch and preferably more pasta for dinner, yup this one was devouring like 1 1/2half trio de pasta in ten minutes.

This went on for around three months and I was seriously wondering why I wasn’t moving forward. Very frustrating.

In March I had enough of not feeling good in my skin ,of being constantly hungry and moody, and of not making any progress. That was when I turned to Jean Marie Bermer from Powerfood’s JMB. Being a certified nutritionist and a trustful person as well with a hell lot of experience, he made me a nutrition plan based on my weight,height and bodyfat-percentage all while taking my daily routines into consideration.

When I first looked at this plan, I thought damn that’s not much food. Hum surprise, the first days I couldn’t even eat all of it because it was so much. Which brings me to an important point : In order to lose weight you don’t have to starve yourself, on the contrary you have to eat (a lot) to make your body work and burn that fat. It may not look like much on the paper, but once you have that freshly cooked meal in front of you,it will be like How am I gonna eat all of this?!

Now how did I switch from McDonalds and sweets all day to eating so healthy? Well,there was no magic trick, sorry to disappoint you. I just had enough of not being able to look at myself in the mirror and once you reach that point you’re willing to change anything. And that’s what I did. It was hard at first because my body was still, badly, craving the unhealthy food, but once I saw the first improvements and, moreover, realized that my new nutrition did my body good, everything seemed so easy suddenly and totally worth it.

As of today, I have way more energy, sleep like a bear at night and never feel hungry during the day. I got rid of all these ugly cravings and that disgusting feeling unhealthy food left me with. My belly always feels full and I’m not even overindulging. I just eat according to my goals and, more important, to my body’s needs. I learned that losing the weight is not the only thing that counts, but to stop treating your body like a trashcan is equally important and, as cheezy as this may sounds, it will thank you for it.

Sticking to this specific plan helps me a lot.When at the grocery store I only buy what is on the list, prepare it, put it into my food-bag and have my meals ready with me all day. It sure takes some time to get used to all this cooking and preparing and measuring, but once I got into it, it became a routine just like washing the teeth in the morning. And now I can’t even imagine going back to my old eating habits.

To give you a quick example before finishing: When I was on vacation earlier this month, the food selection at the hotel gave me a hard time. Everything was fried, soaked in fat and overly sweetened and I was seriously shocked about it. The first day I opted for a pineapple juice, as this is a natural booster, and 4 eggs together with roasted cereal bread as this was the healthiest thing available. I took exactly a half sip of the juice and immediately my entire face contracted because there was so much sugar in it,like ewwww,how can you even drink that? When three years ago I would have devoured a liter of it without a wink. The other days I opted for water and put three slices of lemons in it, that made the deal as well 😉

That was basically the story behind my nutrition change and for the more detailed stuff, you can simply check out the FAQ at the bottom of this post

That’s still my happy yay there’s food-face 😉

FAQ

How long did it take you to lose the weight?

I started working out last year in November, but it was only in March that I kicked through with the nutrition plan and the workout program. So basically around 6 months.

How did you find the right person for the nutrition plan?

Jean Marie Bermer is preparing my sister for her competitions and is a certified nutritionist. I think it’s very important that you trust the person that is setting up your program and that’s what I did. I knew from the very start that Jean-Marie would come up with a plan that was based on my personal situation and that included everything my body needed. After all it’s the health we’re talking about and I would never ever let someone unexperienced and without the right diplomas interfere with my health.

What does your typical food intake for a day look like?

Right now I usually start the day with some pineapple and chicken-ham together with quinoa crackers.

My morning snack is usually a protein shake with some almonds

For lunch and dinner there’s either chicken or salmon mixed with basmati rice or potatoes and of course lots of veggies.

My afternoon snack, that’s also my favorite of the day, is tuna with pineapple or apple.

I drink around three liters of water and that one or other cup of green tea during a day. No alcohol, no soda, no energy drinks whatsoever.

But we are switching the meal plan up every two-three weeks so that it doesn’t get boring and to give the body a new push every now and then.

How do you stay on track?

Part 4 of my series will be all about motivation. So stay tuned for that one.

What about eating out?

Of course there’s times where you’re going to eat out. But that doesn’t mean you have to throw everything overboard and go all-in. As you see on some of my Snapchat photos, you can even make smart choices at a restaurant. Instead of a pizza, order a steak with boiled potatoes and take a fruit plate instead of a chocolate mousse for dessert. At first this wasn’t easy for me to be honest, but there was that one time where I had a huge plate of carbonara pasta and a big bowl of gelato with cream on top and afterwards I couldn’t sleep for the entire night because my belly was hurting so bad. And that made me realize that this food is no longer what my body wants.

What about cheatmeals?

I do have a cheat-meal or treat-meal (call it was you want) every two weeks because that’s what works best for me. I just don’t consider it as important enough to have one every week, as it sets me back in my progress for three days. I also try to limit myself on my cheats, because if I would eat nothing but bad food for an entire day, my body would react very badly to it : cramps, headaches and belly-aches for three days straight, to only name a few.

Hi Cynthia,
He has his own shop in Kahler ( 25 A RUE PRINCIPALE L-8376 KAHLER) ,which is a 10minutes drive from Luxembourg City. You can simply hop in during the opening times and inform yourself about the nutrition and workout programs

[…] That’s still my epic cheat meal face 😉 Give me food and I’m happy haha. Now the article with the most views this week was once again the one about my transformation journey. It seems like you guys kinda like these type of articles, and it makes me overly happy that some of you even feel motivated to kick through after reading this article. So maybe there’s a few more of these posts to come in the future. You can read all about how I changed my diet, what a typical day looks like and what I do while eating out right here […]

Looks great and very inspiring! For me definitely there are two difficult parts in the journey: first one is being tempted to cheat if after some very strict days you don’t see the results and second one, I get very annoyed sometimes preparing food bags for the day – so I tend to skip meals and ending up feeling sh*t at the end of the day.
You should be really proud of your progresses and your discipline!